Chapter 275: The Magician 33
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"A few years ago you said something about erasing ends and beginnings. After that, you disappeared for a hot minute and then came back as a little dot that grew into the you that you are now. Your guess is as good as mine."
Orison felt dazed. "I thought it was just a normal dream after the double life review but... I think I left existence and came back in at this 'here and now'. I-I think I might have saw the end of 'everything'. If so, it was really disappointing. Everything was cold and dark as stuff just broke apart and dissipated.
"Well, enough of that. Might as well go and dispense some gratitude and forgiveness. Just let me check my..."
The young mage looked within to see what goodies might still be floating around in his inner space. If he had subconsciously tossed out a butt load of stuff when he arrived, there should have been at least some. But contrary to expectation, there was nothing. And it was a far greater direness of 'nothing'.
Suddenly, it became clear that what he saw wasn't the 'end of everything'. It was the total dissolution of his inner space. There was nothing left but a void within.
He would have completely panicked at his inability to 'see' any kind of connection to anything but he could obviously feel a wholeness of soul along with a strong and freshly cycling supply of essences. It was bizarre and confusing. Spirit sight was telling him that there was no inner space but only moments ago, he had placed the knight within what he thought was his desolate realm with no more effort than a thought and the knight's passive permission through the spiritual mark on it.
Experimentally, he reached out to his key but couldn't feel it. Despite that, he could sense the connection between himself and Klein. The only other entity that he could reach out to was the knight. It was in bad shape. Some kind of transformation was happening to the knight and there wasn't any energy being supplied to it.
On instinct alone, Orison sensed what it needed and gave it access to whatever that was. His void was nothingness but somehow also possibly anything but only so much at any given time. He had no guides or rudders on how it worked. The seemingly endless nothingness/potential had taken everything, even his soul and concepts. He wondered how he existed, much less functioned, but he felt perfectly fine.
He was about to ask Klein if the guy had any spare clothes when he fell through the floor. It was nonsensical. The floor was solid but he slid right through it while being decently solid himself.
With lightning reflexes, the punk rocker caught Orison by the arm and lifted him back up out of the floor. At least, until he fell through it with the young mage. Apparently, broken physics was contact contagious.
Thinking that they were falling to their doom, Klein screamed with teary eyes, "Quick! Change into my favorite e-girl and call me a dirty pig or something. I want to die with no regrets!"
Despite being just shy of terrified himself, Orison couldn't help but snort out a laugh at how absurd the situation was. It let him gather himself together enough to instinctually draw on one last trump card. An inky darkness slid over and encased him as an over robe like roiling storm clouds unfurled.
Noticing a slowing of their descent, Klein realized he was practically being carried princess style and was on the verge of tears for a different reason. "Nooo. I don't want to be saved by a guy like this. Wait, your face is covered. Can you tell me in a high pitched voice that you saved me even though I'm a disgusting pervert because 'love is justice'? Feel free to ad lib."
Although he was chuckling inside, Orison sighed and said, "How small IS your pride?"
Klein gave an encouraging smile. "Yeah, like that... but with a girl's voice. I'll close my eyes and pretend I just flashed my junk at you."
"Sorry. Maybe if we were about to die for real but it looks like we're actually being drawn to a specific place. Thank goodness the over robe that Benjamin made for me has a good deal of its own power or that would have been more than my poor nerves could have handled," the young mage muttered.
Orison didn't believe he had ever seen someone so depressed to be 'safe'. "Buck up or when I figure out was going on with my power, I'll awaken the memories of your life AS a girl. She pretty much willingly enslaved herself to a big burly orc-like dude."
As they drifted into a huge, cavernous room that looked like it was made of large shadowy cotton balls, Klein looked at the young mage in horror. "No, please! I'm sorry! Wait... Did he have a mean wife? I'm down for some abusive lesb-"
As Orison was pulled into an invisible sphere in the center of the 'shadow cotton room', the punk rocker looking young man was pushed out of the young mage's grip. Klein squinted his eyes at the the invisible wall that caused him to plummet into the downy soft room lining. A fraction of a second later, he was joined by the young mage after emerging again from it.
There was a thoughtful look on Orison's face as he re-clothed himself once again. This time, it was visually the same outfit he had once worn long ago after the Wish Tower on Osomo. It was a personal favorite.
Klein cocked his head to the side and said, "That was... anticlimactic."
Orison chuckled with a raised eyebrow, looking almost in a good mood despite a well of sadness in his eyes. "Busted out the word-a-day calendar for that one, didn't we? Maybe for you... Not that time has much meaning in this place but how long was I in there? You didn't have to wait too long did you?"
The punk rocker was confused. "I've taken longer blinks."
Orison let out a relieved breath. "I was kind of worried that I'd come out and you'd have gone insane from being alone for decades. I can willfully compress or even forget things but you're still too spiritually attached to being human to do that."
Klein, unable to hold his curiosity, asked, "What happened in there? You don't feel much like... well, you."
For a brief moment, deep grief drifted over Orison's features before being packed away just as deeply. "A lot of hard choices and taking a lot of time to make them... The thing we think of as a maze is actually more like a nursery for newborn void walkers. It was made before the Greater Reality we come from even existed. The First Family stumbled on this place and somehow took control of the outer layers.
"The death of several potential natal void walkers was what caused their current decline. I doubt they even know... I always had the impression that the First Family was ruthless and amoral but ultimately relatively fair. Maybe they are but the suffering they've caused over tampering with things they don't understand is immense on a scope I can't even process. Not that I'm in any position to judge that harshly.
"I'm not going to flood you with details but since you came with me, I'll explain a little. Filling the prerequisites for becoming a void walker is hard. Surviving becoming one is almost impossible. This place exists to give a newborn one a fighting chance but the First Family's high jacking of the top levels practically made it a deathtrap instead."
Klein said, "Are voidy things so weak?"
Orison shook his head. "It's the opposite in a way, at least in the beginning. They have too much control over themselves and their resources without the understanding. It's accidental OP suicide."
Tapping his septum ring, Klein said, "Kind of like that anime guy who got bullied until he got super esper powers and ended up a giant exploding meatball?"
"That's... not that far off," the young mage said.
Orison shook himself out of his reveries and added, "For their safety and well being, I had to sever all the connections I had with people before my rebirth as an endless being. Aside from some wonky exceptions here in the maze,maybe a couple of people in different splays of existence, no one even remembers me."
The punk rocker looked like his brain would collapse trying to take that in. "Why would everyone forget?"
Turning his back on Klein, Orison schooled his voice to sound normal as he explained, "When I became 'endless', I had to erase my beginning and end. The way I did it... It kind of erased 'me' and I don't even really know how I did it. The maze used accumulated resources to replace my presence with other possibilities so that there wasn't a violation of causality.
"For something in a lower dimensional existence to affect something in a higher one is one of the BIG violations. I would have been destroyed or banned for all time to the 'outside'... THE outside. See what I mean about how hard it is to become a void walker?"
"Dude... tell me the perks were worth it. That's flipping wrecked," Klein said in clueless but genuine sympathy.
The young mage sucked in a shuddering breath. "It will be. I have to believe that... All I can say is that I'm glad it's been a forever or two since the maze had to help out a newborn. It took a lot. I never really realized until now, just how much I was a part of... everything."
Relatively recomposed, Orison turned towards Klein with a weak smile. "Well, I wanted a clean start. I just didn't realize how 'clean' a start could actually get... Before I get busy with other things, you know you're still technically one of my familiars, so to speak. Do you want to be set free? You still haven't gotten that human lifetime vacation that you wanted."
Klein thumbed his nose. "Meh, I can kick it with you for now."
"Then, because I'm about to work your *ss off, I'll show a little generosity first," the young mage said.
With a thought, the maze moved them to the 'slow room', nearly giving Suniir and Mimi a nerve induced breakdown. It wasn't easy going from the high stress life that they were living, earning points from the First Family's screwed up challenges. The psychologically unhealthy situation that they and some others had been put in made Orison feel bad that the two couldn't forget and get a cleaner redo like everyone else had.
As he looked them over, he had to agree with Klein's assessment. Mimi was a cutie but she had aged sooty streaks across her soul that spoke of old villainy. Suniir had a chronic case of deeply buried hatefulness and emotional distance from getting his heart broken one too many times from just about every source possible for a person to endure.
"Mimi, if you'll help me with three favors, I'll let you keep the cane. Not only that but I'll help you finish bonding with it and introduce you to the original creator," he said.
The sweet expression fell off her face and transformed into the visage of a devil trying to make a ruinous bargain. Despite that, she wasn't that experienced and her loopholes were too easy to close.
"You and Reese are both intolerable bullies! It was my turn to get some payback. I wasn't even going to be that mean about it," Mimi said with teary eyes.
Giving her a saintly smile, the young mage said, "You're allowed to bully someone who tried to eat your soul, Ms Silk Purse. Never the less, that's water under the bridge. You served your time and was forgiven ages ago... Neither I nor Reese could have imagined that your soul's karma would slap you so ironically the very moment you were reborn as a person."
Mimi said sullenly, "Of course YOU wouldn't know but Reese had me reincarnated in 'story land' on purpose."
The young mage sighed. "Well, you got a few licks in... literally. Pretending to be Vivian so you could sweet talk me out of stuff... If it wasn't so hurtful, I'd be impressed at your creativity."
With a leer on her face, she said, "You didn't look 'hurt' to me. It's a shame Klein showed up. I almost got your robe too."
He leered right back. "I may have been on auto pilot but I recall making you 'work' pretty hard for it."
Putting her 'cute' face back on, she said, "You're welcome. You worked pretty hard yourself. I'll be generous and give you a solid 'B'. No real creativity but what can you expect from a sleeping person?"
Unable to help himself, Orison laughed til he cried, "There's no winning against a shameless person."
Klein nodded sagely as he patted the young mage on the back supportively. "You learn to like it. Just remember, you're not really a simp if you get the girl.��
Trying hard to pack the bitterness back in, Orison got down to business. "Suniir, just explaining everything to you isn't enough for you to understand. I want to show you, at least what I know. I want you to see what I saw. Out of everyone who shared time in the recovery coffin with me for one reason or another, you didn't do anything wrong. You were the one wronged. You've been wronged from the time you were a child but no one could give you the answers to any of it.
"If you want to understand, I can show you but the choice is yours. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm offering to let you see the truth as unfiltered as possible."
As Orison waited for him to make his decision, the young mage studied Suniir, trying to figure out just how he could have mistook him for Winter. On the surface, it was easy enough to see similarities between him and the form Winter wore while pretending to be the deep elf named Deacon. Just the skin and a little of the same natural faint scent of strangely complementary sweetness and brimstone, that's where it ended.
Suniir was a head taller and more solidly built. He had shorter, broader ears. Putting aside parts that Orison didn't even want to think about for having a monster of a man like Pete for a father, he also had brown eyes and a relatively wholesome soul. The only thing that really made sense was the connection between Iliyani and Winter and how the young man was indirectly linked to that.
"I want to know," the young man said with grim determination.
Wanting to get it over with as soon as possible, Orison allowed Mimi to pull him and Suniir into a shared illusion. Within, the young mage shared his meeting with Iliyani. He shared moments of Winter's life he thought would allow Suniir to understand the surviving parts of his mother and grant him closure. To finish off, he shared the scene of Pete begging to give everything he had to let his son exist again and the conversation that lead up to it.
In hind sight, Suniir's soul wasn't the one he had saw. It was the soul that would become 'Little Pete'. But at the time, even if caused by a misunderstanding, the bull man's feelings of fatherly concern and desperation were no less genuine.
With red rimmed eyes, Suniir said, "Grandpa told me that mom couldn't let go of the past. I always thought he meant you but it was everything. It was... too much. I- don't hate you but I can't forgive Rose.
"It doesn't matter that she wasn't strong enough. Rose's ghost 'ate' her away. The person afterwards, she wasn't my mother or Rose but I'm a little happy she thought of me."
Locking eyes with Orison, Suniir looked like he was searching for something. "I'm sorry you couldn't find River's soul."
The unexpected comment caught the young mage off guard. It was the most painful thing he had to endure during all his successes and failures in the undead kingdom of the story world. It was a dagger in the heart of all he had accomplished within the 'cradle' of the maze. He had tried to put it behind him, forced himself to forget and gloss over it, but his subconscious held onto it like some dark treasure. Even covering it with the sadness of being unable to save Grit wasn't enough to bury it.
The rest of the time spent in the illusion Mimi weaved for them was a blank spot after that. There was merely the sense that it had taken a long time and it had been eventful. Two people who were too raw inside must have moved Mimi to get a little creative.
When they emerged, both of them had grown and healed a great deal. Whatever happened inside of the illusion that allowed such healing to happen, only she knew. In unspoken agreement, neither Suniir nor Orison voiced any curiosity over it. All that remained amid deep respect and ghostly echoes of fading affection was a faint and lingering regret that being friends, much less anything else, would be too difficult for either of them.
After finding the location of Pete Senior and Junior, before requesting Suniir's transportation there, Orison said, "I've opened the way past the areas controlled by the First Family near where they are. Get YOUR family, Amy and Theo into the maze proper. Don't be in too much of a hurry to leave. There's a little danger but a lot of opportunities hidden in this place."
In the last few seconds before he was transported, Suniir clasped the side of Orison's neck and gave him a light head butt. "No way to move but forward... for both of us."
After a short rest, Mimi collected herself and said, "Klein, make yourself a list of whatever cracked stuff you like for your illusion vacation. Mommy and daddy have important business to take care of."
"In light of what you know, Mimi, don't you think that kind of joke is in sh*t taste!?" Orison said, a mask of barely held rage.
Giving him a grim look that didn't match the heart shaped face she possessed, Mimi said, "Who's joking?"
Orison's mind blanked from the gear grind such a statement caused as he was dragged back into the young woman's illusionary world.
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"A few years ago you said something about erasing ends and beginnings. After that, you disappeared for a hot minute and then came back as a little dot that grew into the you that you are now. Your guess is as good as mine."
Orison felt dazed. "I thought it was just a normal dream after the double life review but... I think I left existence and came back in at this 'here and now'. I-I think I might have saw the end of 'everything'. If so, it was really disappointing. Everything was cold and dark as stuff just broke apart and dissipated.
"Well, enough of that. Might as well go and dispense some gratitude and forgiveness. Just let me check my..."
The young mage looked within to see what goodies might still be floating around in his inner space. If he had subconsciously tossed out a butt load of stuff when he arrived, there should have been at least some. But contrary to expectation, there was nothing. And it was a far greater direness of 'nothing'.
Suddenly, it became clear that what he saw wasn't the 'end of everything'. It was the total dissolution of his inner space. There was nothing left but a void within.
He would have completely panicked at his inability to 'see' any kind of connection to anything but he could obviously feel a wholeness of soul along with a strong and freshly cycling supply of essences. It was bizarre and confusing. Spirit sight was telling him that there was no inner space but only moments ago, he had placed the knight within what he thought was his desolate realm with no more effort than a thought and the knight's passive permission through the spiritual mark on it.
Experimentally, he reached out to his key but couldn't feel it. Despite that, he could sense the connection between himself and Klein. The only other entity that he could reach out to was the knight. It was in bad shape. Some kind of transformation was happening to the knight and there wasn't any energy being supplied to it.
On instinct alone, Orison sensed what it needed and gave it access to whatever that was. His void was nothingness but somehow also possibly anything but only so much at any given time. He had no guides or rudders on how it worked. The seemingly endless nothingness/potential had taken everything, even his soul and concepts. He wondered how he existed, much less functioned, but he felt perfectly fine.
He was about to ask Klein if the guy had any spare clothes when he fell through the floor. It was nonsensical. The floor was solid but he slid right through it while being decently solid himself.
With lightning reflexes, the punk rocker caught Orison by the arm and lifted him back up out of the floor. At least, until he fell through it with the young mage. Apparently, broken physics was contact contagious.
Thinking that they were falling to their doom, Klein screamed with teary eyes, "Quick! Change into my favorite e-girl and call me a dirty pig or something. I want to die with no regrets!"
Despite being just shy of terrified himself, Orison couldn't help but snort out a laugh at how absurd the situation was. It let him gather himself together enough to instinctually draw on one last trump card. An inky darkness slid over and encased him as an over robe like roiling storm clouds unfurled.
Noticing a slowing of their descent, Klein realized he was practically being carried princess style and was on the verge of tears for a different reason. "Nooo. I don't want to be saved by a guy like this. Wait, your face is covered. Can you tell me in a high pitched voice that you saved me even though I'm a disgusting pervert because 'love is justice'? Feel free to ad lib."
Although he was chuckling inside, Orison sighed and said, "How small IS your pride?"
Klein gave an encouraging smile. "Yeah, like that... but with a girl's voice. I'll close my eyes and pretend I just flashed my junk at you."
"Sorry. Maybe if we were about to die for real but it looks like we're actually being drawn to a specific place. Thank goodness the over robe that Benjamin made for me has a good deal of its own power or that would have been more than my poor nerves could have handled," the young mage muttered.
Orison didn't believe he had ever seen someone so depressed to be 'safe'. "Buck up or when I figure out was going on with my power, I'll awaken the memories of your life AS a girl. She pretty much willingly enslaved herself to a big burly orc-like dude."
As they drifted into a huge, cavernous room that looked like it was made of large shadowy cotton balls, Klein looked at the young mage in horror. "No, please! I'm sorry! Wait... Did he have a mean wife? I'm down for some abusive lesb-"
As Orison was pulled into an invisible sphere in the center of the 'shadow cotton room', the punk rocker looking young man was pushed out of the young mage's grip. Klein squinted his eyes at the the invisible wall that caused him to plummet into the downy soft room lining. A fraction of a second later, he was joined by the young mage after emerging again from it.
There was a thoughtful look on Orison's face as he re-clothed himself once again. This time, it was visually the same outfit he had once worn long ago after the Wish Tower on Osomo. It was a personal favorite.
Klein cocked his head to the side and said, "That was... anticlimactic."
Orison chuckled with a raised eyebrow, looking almost in a good mood despite a well of sadness in his eyes. "Busted out the word-a-day calendar for that one, didn't we? Maybe for you... Not that time has much meaning in this place but how long was I in there? You didn't have to wait too long did you?"
The punk rocker was confused. "I've taken longer blinks."
Orison let out a relieved breath. "I was kind of worried that I'd come out and you'd have gone insane from being alone for decades. I can willfully compress or even forget things but you're still too spiritually attached to being human to do that."
Klein, unable to hold his curiosity, asked, "What happened in there? You don't feel much like... well, you."
For a brief moment, deep grief drifted over Orison's features before being packed away just as deeply. "A lot of hard choices and taking a lot of time to make them... The thing we think of as a maze is actually more like a nursery for newborn void walkers. It was made before the Greater Reality we come from even existed. The First Family stumbled on this place and somehow took control of the outer layers.
"The death of several potential natal void walkers was what caused their current decline. I doubt they even know... I always had the impression that the First Family was ruthless and amoral but ultimately relatively fair. Maybe they are but the suffering they've caused over tampering with things they don't understand is immense on a scope I can't even process. Not that I'm in any position to judge that harshly.
"I'm not going to flood you with details but since you came with me, I'll explain a little. Filling the prerequisites for becoming a void walker is hard. Surviving becoming one is almost impossible. This place exists to give a newborn one a fighting chance but the First Family's high jacking of the top levels practically made it a deathtrap instead."
Klein said, "Are voidy things so weak?"
Orison shook his head. "It's the opposite in a way, at least in the beginning. They have too much control over themselves and their resources without the understanding. It's accidental OP suicide."
Tapping his septum ring, Klein said, "Kind of like that anime guy who got bullied until he got super esper powers and ended up a giant exploding meatball?"
"That's... not that far off," the young mage said.
Orison shook himself out of his reveries and added, "For their safety and well being, I had to sever all the connections I had with people before my rebirth as an endless being. Aside from some wonky exceptions here in the maze,maybe a couple of people in different splays of existence, no one even remembers me."
The punk rocker looked like his brain would collapse trying to take that in. "Why would everyone forget?"
Turning his back on Klein, Orison schooled his voice to sound normal as he explained, "When I became 'endless', I had to erase my beginning and end. The way I did it... It kind of erased 'me' and I don't even really know how I did it. The maze used accumulated resources to replace my presence with other possibilities so that there wasn't a violation of causality.
"For something in a lower dimensional existence to affect something in a higher one is one of the BIG violations. I would have been destroyed or banned for all time to the 'outside'... THE outside. See what I mean about how hard it is to become a void walker?"
"Dude... tell me the perks were worth it. That's flipping wrecked," Klein said in clueless but genuine sympathy.
The young mage sucked in a shuddering breath. "It will be. I have to believe that... All I can say is that I'm glad it's been a forever or two since the maze had to help out a newborn. It took a lot. I never really realized until now, just how much I was a part of... everything."
Relatively recomposed, Orison turned towards Klein with a weak smile. "Well, I wanted a clean start. I just didn't realize how 'clean' a start could actually get... Before I get busy with other things, you know you're still technically one of my familiars, so to speak. Do you want to be set free? You still haven't gotten that human lifetime vacation that you wanted."
Klein thumbed his nose. "Meh, I can kick it with you for now."
"Then, because I'm about to work your *ss off, I'll show a little generosity first," the young mage said.
With a thought, the maze moved them to the 'slow room', nearly giving Suniir and Mimi a nerve induced breakdown. It wasn't easy going from the high stress life that they were living, earning points from the First Family's screwed up challenges. The psychologically unhealthy situation that they and some others had been put in made Orison feel bad that the two couldn't forget and get a cleaner redo like everyone else had.
As he looked them over, he had to agree with Klein's assessment. Mimi was a cutie but she had aged sooty streaks across her soul that spoke of old villainy. Suniir had a chronic case of deeply buried hatefulness and emotional distance from getting his heart broken one too many times from just about every source possible for a person to endure.
"Mimi, if you'll help me with three favors, I'll let you keep the cane. Not only that but I'll help you finish bonding with it and introduce you to the original creator," he said.
The sweet expression fell off her face and transformed into the visage of a devil trying to make a ruinous bargain. Despite that, she wasn't that experienced and her loopholes were too easy to close.
"You and Reese are both intolerable bullies! It was my turn to get some payback. I wasn't even going to be that mean about it," Mimi said with teary eyes.
Giving her a saintly smile, the young mage said, "You're allowed to bully someone who tried to eat your soul, Ms Silk Purse. Never the less, that's water under the bridge. You served your time and was forgiven ages ago... Neither I nor Reese could have imagined that your soul's karma would slap you so ironically the very moment you were reborn as a person."
Mimi said sullenly, "Of course YOU wouldn't know but Reese had me reincarnated in 'story land' on purpose."
The young mage sighed. "Well, you got a few licks in... literally. Pretending to be Vivian so you could sweet talk me out of stuff... If it wasn't so hurtful, I'd be impressed at your creativity."
With a leer on her face, she said, "You didn't look 'hurt' to me. It's a shame Klein showed up. I almost got your robe too."
He leered right back. "I may have been on auto pilot but I recall making you 'work' pretty hard for it."
Putting her 'cute' face back on, she said, "You're welcome. You worked pretty hard yourself. I'll be generous and give you a solid 'B'. No real creativity but what can you expect from a sleeping person?"
Unable to help himself, Orison laughed til he cried, "There's no winning against a shameless person."
Klein nodded sagely as he patted the young mage on the back supportively. "You learn to like it. Just remember, you're not really a simp if you get the girl.��
Trying hard to pack the bitterness back in, Orison got down to business. "Suniir, just explaining everything to you isn't enough for you to understand. I want to show you, at least what I know. I want you to see what I saw. Out of everyone who shared time in the recovery coffin with me for one reason or another, you didn't do anything wrong. You were the one wronged. You've been wronged from the time you were a child but no one could give you the answers to any of it.
"If you want to understand, I can show you but the choice is yours. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm offering to let you see the truth as unfiltered as possible."
As Orison waited for him to make his decision, the young mage studied Suniir, trying to figure out just how he could have mistook him for Winter. On the surface, it was easy enough to see similarities between him and the form Winter wore while pretending to be the deep elf named Deacon. Just the skin and a little of the same natural faint scent of strangely complementary sweetness and brimstone, that's where it ended.
Suniir was a head taller and more solidly built. He had shorter, broader ears. Putting aside parts that Orison didn't even want to think about for having a monster of a man like Pete for a father, he also had brown eyes and a relatively wholesome soul. The only thing that really made sense was the connection between Iliyani and Winter and how the young man was indirectly linked to that.
"I want to know," the young man said with grim determination.
Wanting to get it over with as soon as possible, Orison allowed Mimi to pull him and Suniir into a shared illusion. Within, the young mage shared his meeting with Iliyani. He shared moments of Winter's life he thought would allow Suniir to understand the surviving parts of his mother and grant him closure. To finish off, he shared the scene of Pete begging to give everything he had to let his son exist again and the conversation that lead up to it.
In hind sight, Suniir's soul wasn't the one he had saw. It was the soul that would become 'Little Pete'. But at the time, even if caused by a misunderstanding, the bull man's feelings of fatherly concern and desperation were no less genuine.
With red rimmed eyes, Suniir said, "Grandpa told me that mom couldn't let go of the past. I always thought he meant you but it was everything. It was... too much. I- don't hate you but I can't forgive Rose.
"It doesn't matter that she wasn't strong enough. Rose's ghost 'ate' her away. The person afterwards, she wasn't my mother or Rose but I'm a little happy she thought of me."
Locking eyes with Orison, Suniir looked like he was searching for something. "I'm sorry you couldn't find River's soul."
The unexpected comment caught the young mage off guard. It was the most painful thing he had to endure during all his successes and failures in the undead kingdom of the story world. It was a dagger in the heart of all he had accomplished within the 'cradle' of the maze. He had tried to put it behind him, forced himself to forget and gloss over it, but his subconscious held onto it like some dark treasure. Even covering it with the sadness of being unable to save Grit wasn't enough to bury it.
The rest of the time spent in the illusion Mimi weaved for them was a blank spot after that. There was merely the sense that it had taken a long time and it had been eventful. Two people who were too raw inside must have moved Mimi to get a little creative.
When they emerged, both of them had grown and healed a great deal. Whatever happened inside of the illusion that allowed such healing to happen, only she knew. In unspoken agreement, neither Suniir nor Orison voiced any curiosity over it. All that remained amid deep respect and ghostly echoes of fading affection was a faint and lingering regret that being friends, much less anything else, would be too difficult for either of them.
After finding the location of Pete Senior and Junior, before requesting Suniir's transportation there, Orison said, "I've opened the way past the areas controlled by the First Family near where they are. Get YOUR family, Amy and Theo into the maze proper. Don't be in too much of a hurry to leave. There's a little danger but a lot of opportunities hidden in this place."
In the last few seconds before he was transported, Suniir clasped the side of Orison's neck and gave him a light head butt. "No way to move but forward... for both of us."
After a short rest, Mimi collected herself and said, "Klein, make yourself a list of whatever cracked stuff you like for your illusion vacation. Mommy and daddy have important business to take care of."
"In light of what you know, Mimi, don't you think that kind of joke is in sh*t taste!?" Orison said, a mask of barely held rage.
Giving him a grim look that didn't match the heart shaped face she possessed, Mimi said, "Who's joking?"
Orison's mind blanked from the gear grind such a statement caused as he was dragged back into the young woman's illusionary world.
"A few years ago you said something about erasing ends and beginnings. After that, you disappeared for a hot minute and then came back as a little dot that grew into the you that you are now. Your guess is as good as mine."Orison felt dazed. "I thought it was just a normal dream after the double life review but... I think I left existence and came back in at this 'here and now'. I-I think I might have saw the end of 'everything'. If so, it was really disappointing. Everything was cold and dark as stuff just broke apart and dissipated."Well, enough of that. Might as well go and dispense some gratitude and forgiveness. Just let me check my..."The young mage looked within to see what goodies might still be floating around in his inner space. If he had subconsciously tossed out a butt load of stuff when he arrived, there should have been at least some. But contrary to expectation, there was nothing. And it was a far greater direness of 'nothing'. Suddenly, it became clear that what he saw wasn't the 'end of everything'. It was the total dissolution of his inner space. There was nothing left but a void within. He would have completely panicked at his inability to 'see' any kind of connection to anything but he could obviously feel a wholeness of soul along with a strong and freshly cycling supply of essences. It was bizarre and confusing. Spirit sight was telling him that there was no inner space but only moments ago, he had placed the knight within what he thought was his desolate realm with no more effort than a thought and the knight's passive permission through the spiritual mark on it.Experimentally, he reached out to his key but couldn't feel it. Despite that, he could sense the connection between himself and Klein. The only other entity that he could reach out to was the knight. It was in bad shape. Some kind of transformation was happening to the knight and there wasn't any energy being supplied to it.On instinct alone, Orison sensed what it needed and gave it access to whatever that was. His void was nothingness but somehow also possibly anything but only so much at any given time. He had no guides or rudders on how it worked. The seemingly endless nothingness/potential had taken everything, even his soul and concepts. He wondered how he existed, much less functioned, but he felt perfectly fine.He was about to ask Klein if the guy had any spare clothes when he fell through the floor. It was nonsensical. The floor was solid but he slid right through it while being decently solid himself.With lightning reflexes, the punk rocker caught Orison by the arm and lifted him back up out of the floor. At least, until he fell through it with the young mage. Apparently, broken physics was contact contagious.Thinking that they were falling to their doom, Klein screamed with teary eyes, "Quick! Change into my favorite e-girl and call me a dirty pig or something. I want to die with no regrets!"Despite being just shy of terrified himself, Orison couldn't help but snort out a laugh at how absurd the situation was. It let him gather himself together enough to instinctually draw on one last trump card. An inky darkness slid over and encased him as an over robe like roiling storm clouds unfurled.Noticing a slowing of their descent, Klein realized he was practically being carried princess style and was on the verge of tears for a different reason. "Nooo. I don't want to be saved by a guy like this. Wait, your face is covered. Can you tell me in a high pitched voice that you saved me even though I'm a disgusting pervert because 'love is justice'? Feel free to ad lib."Although he was chuckling inside, Orison sighed and said, "How small IS your pride?"Klein gave an encouraging smile. "Yeah, like that... but with a girl's voice. I'll close my eyes and pretend I just flashed my junk at you.""Sorry. Maybe if we were about to die for real but it looks like we're actually being drawn to a specific place. Thank goodness the over robe that Benjamin made for me has a good deal of its own power or that would have been more than my poor nerves could have handled," the young mage muttered.Orison didn't believe he had ever seen someone so depressed to be 'safe'. "Buck up or when I figure out was going on with my power, I'll awaken the memories of your life AS a girl. She pretty much willingly enslaved herself to a big burly orc-like dude."As they drifted into a huge, cavernous room that looked like it was made of large shadowy cotton balls, Klein looked at the young mage in horror. "No, please! I'm sorry! Wait... Did he have a mean wife? I'm down for some abusive lesb-"As Orison was pulled into an invisible sphere in the center of the 'shadow cotton room', the punk rocker looking young man was pushed out of the young mage's grip. Klein squinted his eyes at the the invisible wall that caused him to plummet into the downy soft room lining. A fraction of a second later, he was joined by the young mage after emerging again from it.There was a thoughtful look on Orison's face as he re-clothed himself once again. This time, it was visually the same outfit he had once worn long ago after the Wish Tower on Osomo. It was a personal favorite.Klein cocked his head to the side and said, "That was... anticlimactic."Orison chuckled with a raised eyebrow, looking almost in a good mood despite a well of sadness in his eyes. "Busted out the word-a-day calendar for that one, didn't we? Maybe for you... Not that time has much meaning in this place but how long was I in there? You didn't have to wait too long did you?"The punk rocker was confused. "I've taken longer blinks."Orison let out a relieved breath. "I was kind of worried that I'd come out and you'd have gone insane from being alone for decades. I can willfully compress or even forget things but you're still too spiritually attached to being human to do that."Klein, unable to hold his curiosity, asked, "What happened in there? You don't feel much like... well, you."For a brief moment, deep grief drifted over Orison's features before being packed away just as deeply. "A lot of hard choices and taking a lot of time to make them... The thing we think of as a maze is actually more like a nursery for newborn void walkers. It was made before the Greater Reality we come from even existed. The First Family stumbled on this place and somehow took control of the outer layers."The death of several potential natal void walkers was what caused their current decline. I doubt they even know... I always had the impression that the First Family was ruthless and amoral but ultimately relatively fair. Maybe they are but the suffering they've caused over tampering with things they don't understand is immense on a scope I can't even process. Not that I'm in any position to judge that harshly."I'm not going to flood you with details but since you came with me, I'll explain a little. Filling the prerequisites for becoming a void walker is hard. Surviving becoming one is almost impossible. This place exists to give a newborn one a fighting chance but the First Family's high jacking of the top levels practically made it a deathtrap instead."Klein said, "Are voidy things so weak?"Orison shook his head. "It's the opposite in a way, at least in the beginning. They have too much control over themselves and their resources without the understanding. It's accidental OP suicide."Tapping his septum ring, Klein said, "Kind of like that anime guy who got bullied until he got super esper powers and ended up a giant exploding meatball?""That's... not that far off," the young mage said.Orison shook himself out of his reveries and added, "For their safety and well being, I had to sever all the connections I had with people before my rebirth as an endless being. Aside from some wonky exceptions here in the maze,maybe a couple of people in different splays of existence, no one even remembers me."The punk rocker looked like his brain would collapse trying to take that in. "Why would everyone forget?"Turning his back on Klein, Orison schooled his voice to sound normal as he explained, "When I became 'endless', I had to erase my beginning and end. The way I did it... It kind of erased 'me' and I don't even really know how I did it. The maze used accumulated resources to replace my presence with other possibilities so that there wasn't a violation of causality. "For something in a lower dimensional existence to affect something in a higher one is one of the BIG violations. I would have been destroyed or banned for all time to the 'outside'... THE outside. See what I mean about how hard it is to become a void walker?""Dude... tell me the perks were worth it. That's flipping wrecked," Klein said in clueless but genuine sympathy.The young mage sucked in a shuddering breath. "It will be. I have to believe that... All I can say is that I'm glad it's been a forever or two since the maze had to help out a newborn. It took a lot. I never really realized until now, just how much I was a part of... everything."Relatively recomposed, Orison turned towards Klein with a weak smile. "Well, I wanted a clean start. I just didn't realize how 'clean' a start could actually get... Before I get busy with other things, you know you're still technically one of my familiars, so to speak. Do you want to be set free? You still haven't gotten that human lifetime vacation that you wanted."Klein thumbed his nose. "Meh, I can kick it with you for now.""Then, because I'm about to work your *ss off, I'll show a little generosity first," the young mage said.With a thought, the maze moved them to the 'slow room', nearly giving Suniir and Mimi a nerve induced breakdown. It wasn't easy going from the high stress life that they were living, earning points from the First Family's screwed up challenges. The psychologically unhealthy situation that they and some others had been put in made Orison feel bad that the two couldn't forget and get a cleaner redo like everyone else had.As he looked them over, he had to agree with Klein's assessment. Mimi was a cutie but she had aged sooty streaks across her soul that spoke of old villainy. Suniir had a chronic case of deeply buried hatefulness and emotional distance from getting his heart broken one too many times from just about every source possible for a person to endure."Mimi, if you'll help me with three favors, I'll let you keep the cane. Not only that but I'll help you finish bonding with it and introduce you to the original creator," he said.The sweet expression fell off her face and transformed into the visage of a devil trying to make a ruinous bargain. Despite that, she wasn't that experienced and her loopholes were too easy to close."You and Reese are both intolerable bullies! It was my turn to get some payback. I wasn't even going to be that mean about it," Mimi said with teary eyes.Giving her a saintly smile, the young mage said, "You're allowed to bully someone who tried to eat your soul, Ms Silk Purse. Never the less, that's water under the bridge. You served your time and was forgiven ages ago... Neither I nor Reese could have imagined that your soul's karma would slap you so ironically the very moment you were reborn as a person."Mimi said sullenly, "Of course YOU wouldn't know but Reese had me reincarnated in 'story land' on purpose."The young mage sighed. "Well, you got a few licks in... literally. Pretending to be Vivian so you could sweet talk me out of stuff... If it wasn't so hurtful, I'd be impressed at your creativity."With a leer on her face, she said, "You didn't look 'hurt' to me. It's a shame Klein showed up. I almost got your robe too."He leered right back. "I may have been on auto pilot but I recall making you 'work' pretty hard for it."Putting her 'cute' face back on, she said, "You're welcome. You worked pretty hard yourself. I'll be generous and give you a solid 'B'. No real creativity but what can you expect from a sleeping person?"Unable to help himself, Orison laughed til he cried, "There's no winning against a shameless person."Klein nodded sagely as he patted the young mage on the back supportively. "You learn to like it. Just remember, you're not really a simp if you get the girl.Trying hard to pack the bitterness back in, Orison got down to business. "Suniir, just explaining everything to you isn't enough for you to understand. I want to show you, at least what I know. I want you to see what I saw. Out of everyone who shared time in the recovery coffin with me for one reason or another, you didn't do anything wrong. You were the one wronged. You've been wronged from the time you were a child but no one could give you the answers to any of it."If you want to understand, I can show you but the choice is yours. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm offering to let you see the truth as unfiltered as possible."As Orison waited for him to make his decision, the young mage studied Suniir, trying to figure out just how he could have mistook him for Winter. On the surface, it was easy enough to see similarities between him and the form Winter wore while pretending to be the deep elf named Deacon. Just the skin and a little of the same natural faint scent of strangely complementary sweetness and brimstone, that's where it ended.Suniir was a head taller and more solidly built. He had shorter, broader ears. Putting aside parts that Orison didn't even want to think about for having a monster of a man like Pete for a father, he also had brown eyes and a relatively wholesome soul. The only thing that really made sense was the connection between Iliyani and Winter and how the young man was indirectly linked to that."I want to know," the young man said with grim determination.Wanting to get it over with as soon as possible, Orison allowed Mimi to pull him and Suniir into a shared illusion. Within, the young mage shared his meeting with Iliyani. He shared moments of Winter's life he thought would allow Suniir to understand the surviving parts of his mother and grant him closure. To finish off, he shared the scene of Pete begging to give everything he had to let his son exist again and the conversation that lead up to it.In hind sight, Suniir's soul wasn't the one he had saw. It was the soul that would become 'Little Pete'. But at the time, even if caused by a misunderstanding, the bull man's feelings of fatherly concern and desperation were no less genuine.With red rimmed eyes, Suniir said, "Grandpa told me that mom couldn't let go of the past. I always thought he meant you but it was everything. It was... too much. I- don't hate you but I can't forgive Rose."It doesn't matter that she wasn't strong enough. Rose's ghost 'ate' her away. The person afterwards, she wasn't my mother or Rose but I'm a little happy she thought of me."Locking eyes with Orison, Suniir looked like he was searching for something. "I'm sorry you couldn't find River's soul."The unexpected comment caught the young mage off guard. It was the most painful thing he had to endure during all his successes and failures in the undead kingdom of the story world. It was a dagger in the heart of all he had accomplished within the 'cradle' of the maze. He had tried to put it behind him, forced himself to forget and gloss over it, but his subconscious held onto it like some dark treasure. Even covering it with the sadness of being unable to save Grit wasn't enough to bury it.The rest of the time spent in the illusion Mimi weaved for them was a blank spot after that. There was merely the sense that it had taken a long time and it had been eventful. Two people who were too raw inside must have moved Mimi to get a little creative. When they emerged, both of them had grown and healed a great deal. Whatever happened inside of the illusion that allowed such healing to happen, only she knew. In unspoken agreement, neither Suniir nor Orison voiced any curiosity over it. All that remained amid deep respect and ghostly echoes of fading affection was a faint and lingering regret that being friends, much less anything else, would be too difficult for either of them.After finding the location of Pete Senior and Junior, before requesting Suniir's transportation there, Orison said, "I've opened the way past the areas controlled by the First Family near where they are. Get YOUR family, Amy and Theo into the maze proper. Don't be in too much of a hurry to leave. There's a little danger but a lot of opportunities hidden in this place."In the last few seconds before he was transported, Suniir clasped the side of Orison's neck and gave him a light head butt. "No way to move but forward... for both of us."After a short rest, Mimi collected herself and said, "Klein, make yourself a list of whatever cracked stuff you like for your illusion vacation. Mommy and daddy have important business to take care of.""In light of what you know, Mimi, don't you think that kind of joke is in sh*t taste!?" Orison said, a mask of barely held rage.Giving him a grim look that didn't match the heart shaped face she possessed, Mimi said, "Who's joking?"Orison's mind blanked from the gear grind such a statement caused as he was dragged back into the young woman's illusionary world.
